Revolution no Mokushiroku
by Frogstaff
Summary: More than fourteen years have passed since Utena fled Ohtori, and in the 'real' world portents weigh heavily in the skies, and darkness comes stealing into dreams. The Revolution is coming, and He will not be stopped.
1. Bitter Tears

Chapter One  
Kourui  
  
Moonlight poured down from above, throwing the columns into high relief and the surrounding buildings into impenetrable shadow.  
  
Her will was not her own as she moved; she was merely an observer behind her eyes, watching her feet as they slowly stepped forward. She knew this place, although she wasn't sure how. She passed a fountain, the water long since stopped flowing, a few inches lying green and stagnant at the bottom. Yet at the same time she saw the marble gleaming white, water flying upward in a sparkling arc. From just behind her ear she heard the smug purr of a well-tuned engine.  
  
Her feet kept moving and she left the fountain behind, an arboretum sliding into her field of view. If she'd had control of her body she would've shivered. It was shaped like a birdcage, but the metalwork was rusted and falling to pieces, the glass opaque with age and dirt. Several panels were broken, pushed out by gnarled, clutching rose vines. They were thick, twisted, brown and dead, the few blossom that still clung to them shriveled and ugly. Despite the bright moon and broken panels the inside of the arboretum was completely dark, and a draft blew out through the missing glass that stank of something forever dead.  
  
Yet on top of that, almost as though she were seeing a separate image through each eye, she saw the greenhouse how it might have once been, masses of vibrant roses filling it, the vines that climbed the glass weighed down with lusciously red flowers. But then the grave stench filled her nostrils and all that she saw was a thing of death that promised even worse. Merely passing within sight of the decayed arboretum was almost enough to make her want to scream, but that wasn't the worst. That was still to come.  
  
She actively began to fight, to try and regain control of herself, because she knew if she didn't, she'd go there. Her feet pulled her across another crumbling courtyard, towards a dead forest whose skeletal branches strained impotently at the sky. A high gate would've barred access to the forest, except that it had been torn away and lay wrapped around the battered and rusting hulk of a car.  
  
There was another gate beyond the first, at the end of a walkway flanked on both sides by pools filled with black and scummy water. It too lay open and beyond it a spiral stairway clawed upwards through the top of the forest. The same ancient death fetor that clung to the arboretum poured down from the stairs with enough strength to stir her hair.  
  
She would have fallen to the ground gibbering in terror if she'd been able to. The stench was almost a physical thing, wrapping around her with clutching fingers that pulled her towards the gate. Every time she dreamed of this place it pulled her a little closer and somehow she knew that once it pulled her through the gate and set her foot upon the stairs she would be gone.  
  
She fought for control with everything she had and finally her body began to become her own again. Small, strangled sounds of fear began to slip from her lips as her steps began to slow. Still, it took her even longer to regain control than it had before and she was almost through the gate before she could force her legs to still.  
  
This was the closest she'd ever been to the gate and a few fitful beams of moonlight penetrated the canopy of branches, casting just enough light for her to see the stairs until they curved and disappeared above her head. She heard a noise; something was coming down the stairs and she knew it was coming for her. The stink became so intense that she couldn't breathe and she fell to her knees, gagging.  
  
The thing reached the base of the stairs and began slithering towards her and she could hear a low bubbling hiss as it breathed. Even though there was no wind, the branches above her shifted, throwing more moonlight down from above, illuminating the thing as it crawled towards her.  
  
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Eiminoujo clapped her hands over her mouth to choke back the scream that tried to pour out of her throat. Her heart was beating so hard that it felt like each beat forced her spine to arch. She bit down on her fingers until the scream was nothing more than a whimper, and then took her hand away with a shuddering breath as the dream and the terror drained away. She'd been having that dream frequently. For as long as she could remember she'd dreamt of a grandiose yet decrepit palace, but they'd neither been particularly frequent nor vivid until she'd turned fourteen. That was when in her dreams she'd no longer wandered aimlessly though crumbling hallways and rotting classrooms. It was when she'd turned fourteen that she'd first felt the inexorable pull towards the arboretum, and then the forest.  
  
As she tried to lull herself back to sleep, Eiminoujo heard her mother moaning in the next room. She seemed to have been having bad dreams more frequently than usual as well.  
  
Eiminoujo rolled onto her side and curled up, clutching a stuffed monkey to her chest. She closed her eyes, trying to ignore the cries coming from the next room. At one point she was sure that she heard her mother call out someone's name, but after that she was silent.  
  
Eiminoujo held the stuffed animal a little tighter and clenched her eyes, but sleep was long in coming.  
  
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She awoke shortly after dawn, stray sunbeams sneaking in through chinks in the blinds and prodding at her eyelids. Her eyes felt grainy and strained as she slowly opened them, and the inside of her head had that stuffed with cotton feel that came from getting too little sleep.  
  
She stumbled into the bathroom, cursing as only a small trickle of tepid water issued from the tap. She cupped her hands and let it collect for several seconds, then splashed it against her face. She didn't even bother trying the toilet. If they were lucky they might be able to hassle the landlord into repairing the pipes within a couple of days.  
  
She went into the kitchen and began preparing breakfast, dipping into one of the pitchers of water in the refrigerator that was reserved for just such a circumstance. She heard her mother rise, and put a kettle on stove for her.  
  
By the time Utena entered the kitchen, breakfast was already on the table and a cup of tea was steeped and ready. "Morning, Eimi," Utena mumbled. No one called Eimi by her full name, not even her mother. It was difficult to pronounce and sounded awkward as well, but by the occasional, fragmented explanation, Utena'd had deliberate intentions when she'd given her daughter a name that could be read as 'the princess of eternal sleep.'  
  
Utena didn't look like she'd slept well either. Her eyes seemed exceptionally large and her hair was mussed. Her mother's hair fascinated Eimi. It was a shade of blond so pale as to be almost white. Some days, like this one, it caught the light in such a way as to appear a pale shade of pink. Her own hair was a more normal shade of near black, although from time to time it seemed to have odd purple and even silver highlights. She supposed that that came from her father, not that she knew much about him. Although she barely knew anything about her mother either. Utena rarely spoke about her past, especially prior to when Eimi was born. Eimi had tried to do some searching on her own, but always failed to find anything predating her own birth record. About all that she knew about her mother was that Utena was close to thirty, which meant that she couldn't have been more than fifteen when Eimi had been born. Eimi supposed that her mother must've changed her name and run away from home after getting pregnant, because she'd failed to find any school or family records in Utena's name. All that Eimi really did know was that her mother had never finished school and provided for herself and Eimi through a series of menial jobs that barely provided enough to get by on.  
  
That was why the two of them lived in a rat hole of an apartment where the plumbing didn't work more often than not. Why Eimi worked after school as a stock girl in the run down local conbini, instead of being in the theater club. Her mother forbade her to do it, but like most things, her mother forgot that particular edict, maybe even that Eimi had a job, before too long. Her mother rarely seemed to remember anything for too long because her mother really wasn't all there.  
  
Utena had quickly finished her first cup of tea and was already almost done with the second. With a sigh Eimi put another kettle on the stove. Her mother was having one of her moods again. "Drinking all that tea isn't good for you," she said, more out of habit than anything else.  
  
"We promised each other," Utena began, starting on another cup, "that we would drink tea together." She seemed to be talking to herself, and Eimi momentarily considered asking about her father again. Utena occasionally seemed to be more tractable when she was in one of her moods, but sometimes her answers were more frightening than her silence.  
  
According to Utena, Eimi had been a virgin birth. Her father had been a beautiful but cold man with scarlet hair and a well hidden but tender heart. Her father was the darkness given body. Her father was a prince on a white horse who wanted to save all the girls of the world. Her father was a woman, a princess forever held captive that her mother had failed to save.  
  
"I'm off to school now, I'll see you this evening," Eimi said, pausing at the door.  
  
Utena didn't seem to hear her and as Eimi closed the door behind her, she saw her mother reach out, as if to someone sitting on the other side of the table. "Someday, shine with me," Utena said softly.  
  
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Eimi walked alone to school. She had no real friends and although the other students didn't avoid her outright, then never got too close either. She didn't mind, too much.  
  
"Good morning Tenjou-san," a voice said behind Eimi, stopping her in the hall.  
  
"Good morning Souji-sensei," she replied, turning with a bow.  
  
"How is your mother this morning?" he asked mildly.  
  
"The same," Eimi replied. The teacher might be the one link that Eimi had to finding out about her mother's past, although for the most part he was just as closemouthed as she was. She'd first met him when she started junior high school. He inquired after Utena each morning and at first Eimi'd had thought that he'd had a romantic interest in her; he seemed to be only a few years older than her mother, but then one day he'd let slip that he'd once know Utena from _before_.  
  
The day after he'd shone up at the apartment and had a long conversation with her mother in private. Eimi hadn't been able to hear what they'd said, and his visit had ended with her mother in hysterics, screaming 'that she should've driven the sword through his heart!' After that, he'd never tried to talk to Utena in person again, or said directly said anything further about how they'd known each other from before, but he did inquire after her each morning,  
  
"That is something, I suppose," he said with a nod then turned back down the hall. "I'll see you in class then." Eimi watched him for a few moments. He had hair very much like her mother's and as the thought suddenly struck her, she wondered if maybe the two of them might be related.  
  
She chewed the idea for several moments and then discarded it. The only similarity between Souji and her mother was their hair and for some reason, the thought of him being a blood relation just felt like it was wrong. Although, she realized, they both did have a certain manner about them, a sense of being somewhere else even as they stood right in front of you. However the sensation was never as strong with Souji as it was with her mother, although there'd been a couple times when he'd thought that he was alone and she'd heard him muttering about 'preparing the way before them.'  
  
She sighed and tried to dismiss the whole thing. None of it really mattered, not in a world as messed up and unfair as this one. She knew that better than most. In a fair world she wouldn't have to put in eight hours at a convenience store every day in order to make sure that the rent was paid on time and there was food in the fridge. In a fair world, she wouldn't have to be mother to her own mother, making sure that she got up and off to work most days.  
  
During class she gave her teacher only half an ear. The woman was enjoining them all to work hard if they wanted to pass the entrance exams for a good high school. Eimi had neither the time nor the money to take the cram classes to ensure she got into a decent high school, and no college worth the effort would want anything to do with her. She was beginning to have trouble seeing the point of even staying in school at all. If she dropped out then she at least could get another job and she could afford to move to an apartment that at least had reliable plumbing.  
  
Eimi sighed. The only way in which she didn't see her life turning out exactly like her mother's was that she wasn't pregnant at fourteen. She let her eyes drift out the window and her breath caught in her throat. The school courtyard was gone. The arboretum from her dreams was there instead, two people standing in front of it; a girl in a delicate, frilly dress with her hair drawn back in a bun, and a young man in an ornate white uniform whose long hair spilled down his back. He pushed the girl back against the glass door, and his hand rose, the fingers rigid. Eimi slapped her hands down on her desk, rising to her feet. "Saionji, don-!"  
  
"Is there some problem?" the teacher demanded, and Eimi blinked, realizing that she'd half risen from her seat. The vista out the window was gone, and all that Eimi saw were the few scraggly trees and ill kept grass that were always there. "I-I'm sorry," she stammered, sitting back down. "I had a ... back spasm. It won't happen again." The other students were staring at her, and Eimi felt a blush creeping up her cheeks.  
  
She glanced back out the window, but there was nothing to indicate that anything unusual had ever been out there. Who had those people been? She was sure that she hadn't ever seen either of them before, but as she was leaping to her feet she knew that it'd been the boy's name about to cross her lips.  
  
A few girls in the back of the room were whispering and shooting smirking glances her way, but after a few seconds the rest of the students again treated her as if she wasn't actually there. Maybe she wasn't. Maybe, like her mother, she wasn't all there, except that in her case, it was in the physical sense.  
  
The thought stayed with Eimi throughout the day. There was something inexplicably attractive about the idea that maybe she wasn't really there at all. Maybe she was just someone's daydream and that was why she kept seeing the ancient palace, the nonexistent people, because she only existed inside someone else's mind and sometimes they dreamed of other things.  
  
Souji-sensei noticed her distraction and pulled her aside at the end of his class. "Is there something bothering you, Tenjou-san?" he asked. Even when trying to show concern his voice retained a cool and distant quality. The only time she that could remember hearing anything that even approached genuine emotion in his voice had been the night that he'd confronted her mother.  
  
"Mom had a difficult night last night. She was having tea when I left this morning." Souji understood the reference. Eimi had explained to him before about her mother's tendency to spend the entire day staring over a cup of tea at someone who wasn't there. "Souji-sensei, do you know what she meant by, 'someday, shine with me?'"  
  
He got a distant look in his eyes, as if some far distant vista had appeared at the edge of his sight. "You may call me Mikage, when we're alone. No, I don't know what your mother meant, but I think that I understand the sentiment. Once, there was someone who I thought shone, but in the end..." he trailed off and the look in his eyes became even more far off. "Utena and I attended school together."  
  
Eimi blinked, never having expected Mikage to venture such information so freely. "Really, where?"  
  
Mikage was completely oblivious to everything around him now, and Eimi couldn't fight the unsettling feeling that he was fading away before her eyes. "Someplace... somewhere where the dead may be alive again..."  
  
Eimi felt the air stir across the back of her neck and an unspeakable odor curled in her nostrils. "They think that you may be capable of obtaining eternity," a soft voice said directly behind her. Eimi whirled and for a second, out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw a young boy with his nose buried in the petals of a black rose. However, when she'd fully turned, there was no one there. Even the smell was gone.  
  
"Was there anything else?" Mikage asked and Eimi was sure that she heard the barest tremor in his tone. She turned back around and saw by his eyes that whatever it'd been that he'd seen, it was gone again.  
  
"No," Eimi said a trifle unsteadily. The look on his face forbade her from voicing the questions she'd hoped he'd answer. "I'll see you tomorrow." The hairs along the back of her neck didn't settle until she was far away from the school.  
  
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Eimi massaged her aching fingers as she walked home, the bag containing dinner clutched tightly beneath her arm. She'd dropped a beverage case on her hand while stocking a cooler and a dark bruise extended from her knuckles to her wrist. Her ears still blistered from the manager's tirade about not being more careful, not because she hurt herself, but because she might've broken the bottles.  
  
A block from the apartment, Eimi paused, cocking her head to listen. "No, oh no," she moaned, then broke into a run. Her mother was out on the balcony, shaking her fist at the sky.  
  
"I know you're out there, I can feel you!" Utena shouted. "You can't have her, I'll never let you have her!"  
  
There was a small crowd of gawkers on the street below and Eimi had to elbow her way through them to get through to the door. She ran into the landlord halfway up the stairs. "Get her off of there," the old man crabbed. "She's been shouting at nothing since this afternoon."  
  
"Fix the pipes," Eimi snapped back, pushing past. She turned on the lights as she walked into the apartment and put the bag down on the kitchen table. Tea was scattered across the counter and water from a spilled kettle pooled on the floor. Eimi yanked open the balcony door and stormed out. "Mother, get back in. You're making a scene."  
  
Utena didn't seem to hear her and continued to scream obscenities at the stars. At patience's end Eimi grabbed her mother by the arm and dragged her back inside. Utena seemed surprised to see her and threw her arms around Eimi and began sobbing. "You didn't come home. I was afraid that he might've found you."  
  
"Who?" Eimi demanded crossly.  
  
Utena's eyes darted towards the sky. "Him, the morning star."  
  
Eimi ground her teeth in frustration. She should've known better than to expect her mother to make any sense. "I was at work, the same place I am every evening. I don't suppose you went to work today, did you?"  
  
Utena looked taken aback. "I was having tea with... with..." her expression seemed to deflate. "I was having tea..."  
  
"I noticed. You left it scattered across the kitchen. I'll get started on dinner." Eimi turned on the television and then tossed the remote at her mother. "Why don't you watch your programs until it's ready?"  
  
Utena's expression turned to indignation at being talked down to and she looked up, meeting Eimi's eyes. For a moment her eyes were windows to the depths of eternity and in them Eimi saw sorrow and despair more than any human could bear. Then the moment passed and all she saw in her mother's blurry blue eyes were tears.  
  
Shaken, Eimi turned and went to the kitchen. As she set the table she wondered if maybe her mother's madness was genetic. She was already seeing and hearing things that weren't really there, maybe she was going mad too. But Souji-sensei too had seen something that afternoon.  
  
So maybe he was losing it too. There was definitely something strange about Mikage, although he wasn't as far gone as her mother was. Eimi glanced towards the balcony, wondering what had prompted her mother to go out there in the first place. Utena hated going outside under the open sky, almost to the point of agoraphobia, especially at night when the stars were out. For some reason Utena seemed to both hate and be terrified by them. On more than one occasion she'd seen her mother staring up towards the sky while muttering about 'having touched the heavens and found them false.'  
  
Dinner proceeded as usual, with almost no conversation, although Utena seemed to be more in touch than usual, helping clean up afterwards. "Please remember to go to work tomorrow," Eimi enjoined her. "I can't support the both of us if you lose your job, again."  
  
Utena seemed to be on the point of crying. "You are the only good thing to have come from that place. Please, be careful. You're all that's keeping me from going back."  
  
"Back where?" Eimi asked but Utena didn't reply and the look in her eyes hinted at hidden depths of pain and suffering. Eimi shivered and let the matter drop.  
  
Utena was in her robe, sitting at the kitchen table with another cup of tea when Eimi went to bed. "Please don't stay up too late, okay mom?"  
  
Utena smiled wanly and set her cup down as Eimi closed her door and shut off the lights. Faint starlight spilled in through the window and for some reason it made Eimi's skin crawl. She shared a small fraction of her mother's fear and nebulous resentment of the heavens, although she didn't understand why. She still felt a vague uneasiness as she closed the blinds and burrowed beneath the covers, and pulled her stuffed monkey in with her. "Maybe I really am going crazy if I still have to sleep with you, Chuchu," Eimi told the monkey, using the nonsensical name that her mother had bequeathed the doll with. She pressed her face against the back of its head and slowly drifted off to sleep.  
  
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The dream started almost instantly. This time she began right in front of the forest, almost through the first gate. She barely had time for thought before the invisible hand squeezed her, almost too tightly to breathe, and yanked her forward. Something lurking by the base of the curving staircase chuckled as it pulled her in and the death stench that poured from the gates was tinged with anticipation.  
  
There was a flash of steel and a sword cut the stones at her feet, the invisible hand vanishing. An almost fleshless hand grasped the sword's hilt, the arm it was attached to disappearing back into shadow, although Eimi saw a hint of tattered white sleeve, which for some reason reminded her of the uniform that the boy she'd seen this morning wore.  
  
"Always the chivalrous one," muttered a dead, wounded voice from the thing waiting by the stairs.  
  
"You can't be allowed to have her," replied the figure in the shadows, in a voice that sounded like pride eternally broken.  
  
"You risk my wrath Kiryuu, be wary."  
  
"What can you do to me, that I have not already suffered? You are powerless without her, and I will see that you remain that way. No matter the cost."  
  
"I haven't even started with you, Kiryuu. Interfere with me again and you shall know how terrible my wrath can be."  
  
A hand suddenly closed around Eimi's shoulders from behind. "You can't have her!" a familiar voice proclaimed and the black clothed arm hugged Eimi tightly. Another arm slid around her side, this one holding an ornate sword with a rose worked hilt.  
  
The thing by the stairs hissed and threw itself forward, and the rose worked sword flashed down, cutting through the fabric of the dream.  
  
Eimi's eyes shot open and she sat up, knocking Chuchu to the floor. There was someone in the room with her and as her eyes adjusted, Eimi found herself staring at her mother, only as she must have appeared fifteen years ago. Her hair reached midway down her back and her eyes were wide, blue and without guile. She wore a black jacket and red pants and in her hand she gripped the rose worked sword from Eimi's dream. "M-mother," Eimi stammered, and the image was gone. She got up, moving carefully into the hall. She heard a noise from her mother's room and slid open the door.  
  
Utena was crying in her sleep, tear tracks glimmering along her cheeks in the faint starlight. "Oh, Touga," she cried softly, "what has he done to you?" She had one hand clenched tightly in a fist and as she cried her fingers slipped open and something fell from her palm, making a metallic ching as it struck the floor. The object rolled across the room, bumping into Eimi's toe. She bent down to examine it and realized that it was a ring.  
  
It lay cold and heavy in her palm, a thick, silver band capped by an ornately worked enamel rose. She closed her fingers around it in a tight fist, a gesture which she found strangely reassuring. She returned to her room and climbed back into bed, staring at the ring until she fell back asleep.  
  
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Eimi left for school early the next morning. She wanted to talk with Mikage about the ring, and possibly her dream as well. For some reason she felt that having the ring would make him more forthcoming. She arrived at school even before the sports clubs started their morning practices and went straight to the teachers' room. Mikage wasn't there, but a still steaming cup of coffee indicated that he he'd probably return soon. She clutched the ring tightly but as she approached Mikage's desk it almost seemed to jump and slipped from her grasp. Eimi dropped to her knees and tried to grab it, but it rolled underneath Mikage's desk and she had to stretch to reach it. As she pulled it out her hand brushed something tucked away into the space where the bottom drawer should've been.  
  
She pulled the object from its hiding place and discovered that it was a thick, well worn binder. She flipped through it, discovering that it held a hundred or so pages, each one containing a hand drawing, and one or more photos, and was filled with cramped handwriting that she recognized as being Mikage's. There was a pocket in the back, and in it she discovered a ring, cracked through the center and in two pieces, almost a mirror of the one she held, save for that this one was done in black iron and onyx. She quickly put the ring back. Holding it, for some reason, made the nape of her neck crawl like someone was running their nails across a blackboard.  
  
She went back through the binder examining the pictures. Each one seemed to be of a young man and the photograph was always a close, but not perfect, resemblance to the hand drawing, as if each were of two closely related boys. Above each drawing was the word 'dead,' although from the rest of the notes seemed to indicate that the boy was still very much alive. However, as she flipped through, she noticed that nearly a third included a second 'dead' heading above the photograph, this one including a subheading of 'suicide' along with a date and brief description. An unsettling number seemed to have willingly burned themselves to death.  
  
Then Eimi came across an entry that made her pause. 'Mikage Souji, Graduated.' Again there was a hand drawing, and Eimi imagined that the cold, arrogant visage was how he had appeared as a young man. The 'graduated' was written with such force that the thick paper was actually torn in a place, and Eimi, curious, began to read the notes that went along with it.  
  
She understood very little of it. The writing mostly seemed to be existential musings about eternity, but as she read on it also described a place, a school, and with a start Eimi realized that it sounded exactly like the palace in her dreams.  
  
"What are you doing?"  
  
Eimi looked up and saw Mikage looming over her, and for a second his eyes were open and in them she saw bottomless hatred, and total, all consuming arrogance, then he blinked and when he opened his eyes again they were back to normal.  
  
"How did you find this?" he demanded, snatching the binder from her hands.  
  
"I dropped my ring and it rolled under your desk. When I picked it up, I found that."  
  
"What ring?"  
  
Reluctantly, Eimi opened her hand and showed him the rose crest. His face went pale and the binder slipped from his grasp, a few loose pictures fluttering free. "Where did you get that?"  
  
"My mother had it. I had a dream last night, and so did she, about that place you described in that notebook. What is it?"  
  
"Give me the ring," Mikage demanded.  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Because it's his sign, how he marks you," Mikage said, baring his teeth and hissing. "Give it to me!"  
  
"No."  
  
"It has to be destroyed. I told her she had to destroy it, that as long as she held it he could reach through."  
  
Eimi shook her head and began to back up. "No, you can't, this is, this is..." She had a sudden flash of understanding and extended her finger.  
  
"NO!" Mikage shouted, lunging forward as Eimi slipped the rose crest onto her hand.  
  
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	2. The Dream People

Chapter Two Yumejin  
  
She was walking along the road that bordered the end of forever. Two lanes ran to infinity before her; she assumed that they stretched just as far behind her but once again she found that she was only a passenger within her own head and could only look straight ahead as her legs moved of their own accord. Lamps lined the side of the road, creating small pools of light against the black pavement, but they did nothing to illuminate the inky darkness that reached to eternity in all directions beyond the road's edge.  
  
Eimi didn't know how long she walked and the road before her never changed, always two lanes and an endless column of lamps dwindling into the distance. It wasn't until the noise had been rising for several minutes that she even realized it was there at all. It started as a low, distant hum, but with agonizing slowness it grew, and finally she recognized it as the growl of a car's engine. Light began to spill over her shoulders, her shadow reaching for the end of the road, then slowly shortening, as the headlights grew closer.  
  
The engine slowed and grew soft as the car pulled up beside her but Eimi's gaze remained fixed straight ahead and she could only see it from the very corner of her eye. It appeared to be a sports car, painted a sensuous shade of red. The passenger door swung open and without turning Eimi slid into the seat. The door closed on its own behind her.  
  
The car leapt forward, pressing Eimi deep into her seat. She would've sworn that the light from the lamps actually bent away from car as it raced by, leaving the interior dark, although Eimi sensed that there was someone in the driver's seat.  
  
The car leapt forward again as the driver mashed the accelerator to the floor and the engine began to whine and make grinding noises, as if each revolution aged the pistons by years. The red paint began to darken and peel and between the passage of one light and the next the car's entire surface disappeared beneath an ugly patina of rust. Eimi sank further into her seat, the springs digging into her thighs as the material rotted and tore beneath her weight.  
  
The car began to swerve uncontrollably across the road, coming unspeakably close to flying over the edge and into the darkness beyond. The driver began to laugh, a wrenching, horrible, triumphant sound that made Eimi's stomach shrivel into a ball of ice. She sensed more the saw the driver reach out and grab the windshield, the frame twisting beneath terrible strength and the laughter reached crescendo as the driver vaulted over it and onto the hood. The move threw him forward into the light of a lamp before it could shy away and his face was illuminated for a fraction of a second, too quick to make out his features, but Eimi still tried to scream, terrified by the awful sense of familiarity he exuded.  
  
The wheels flew out from beneath the car as the axles disintegrated completely and it leapt into the air as its bumper dug into the pavement, beginning a slow pinwheel. Eimi tried to scream and throw her arms up into the air but she was still held immobile and could only watch as the roadway rushed up towards her.  
  
Eimi stumbled, catching herself on the edge of the fountain as her body tried to account for motion that wasn't there. The highway was gone and there was no sign of either the car or its driver and as Eimi slowly regained her feet, she looked around.  
  
Her knuckles whitened as she squeezed the marble with all of her might, but her arms began to tremble none the less. She knew this place, this courtyard, this fountain; this was the palace from her dreams.  
  
Her hands shook uncontrollably as Eimi held them up to her face. The rose signet fit snugly over her finger, its band bright and polished. Eimi stared at it, wondering what had suddenly possessed her to put it on, why she had ignored Souji's uncharacteristic burst of emotion and thrust it onto her finger. She had acted on impulse, but she never acted on impulse. Impulse was what her crazy mother did.  
  
Eimi began to walk, hating how real the loose grit and stone felt beneath her feet. She wanted to convince herself that somehow she'd manage to induce a gran mal hallucination and in actuality was still at school, standing in the teacher's room with Mikage. She kicked a wall, hating the sudden resistance of the stone and the small pain in her foot. This couldn't be real. She lived in a world that made sense, where the roads ended and putting on a ring did not take you to where you dreamed.  
  
She looked down at the ring again. Putting it on had brought her here, so logically taking it off should take her home. Eimi tried to swallow back near hysterical laughter as she reached for the ring. Her recent life seemed to be almost completely bereft of logic.  
  
As soon as her finger touched the band, the rose sprouted thorns that dug straight into the flesh of her finger. Eimi screamed as the thorns writhed beneath her skin, not stopping until she'd let go of the ring and dropped to the ground, clutching her hand to her stomach.  
  
She lay there, breathing shallowly for several minutes, light headed from the pain. It finally receded enough for her to think again, although blood still coursed freely from beneath the band. This was no hallucination; Eimi couldn't believe it possible to imagine pain so intense.  
  
She leaned against the courtyard's wall, staring up at the buildings rising up around her. Why this place, what was it's meaning? As she looked around she remembered that this wasn't a palace. Before, when she could wander freely through her dreams instead of being inexorably drawn to the dead forest and its stairway, she would come across rooms filled with cobwebbed desks and dusty chalkboards. Her dream world wasn't a palace, it was a school.  
  
_ Utena and I attended school together_. Mikage's words suddenly came back to her. Was this... place the school that he'd been talking about?  
  
Eimi had the sudden feeling that there were a thousand eyes on her, and she shivered, sliding along the wall and stepping back into one of the halls leading into the courtyard. The school was even worse now than it had been in her dreams. The air stank of dryness and death and aged things long abandoned. She shrank farther back into the corridor, leaving the courtyard behind, feeling relief as the sensation of watching eyes faded. The hall was almost completely dark, but she could make out formless shapes lining the walls around her. She quickly turned into a slightly brighter corridor but stopped after only a few steps, nearly overwhelmed by the sensation that something was watching her. A broken window far down the hall thinned the shadows and she began towards it, her steps quickening. She regretted leaving the courtyard, where at least there was steady light to quell the shadows.  
  
She could imagine thousands of hungry eyes staring out of the shadows behind her, and wondered what kind of beasts might prowl corridors so long abandoned by human presence. She thought she heard a noise behind her and broke into a full run, stumbling over things barely seen in the half-light. Her eyes remained fixed on the broken window, praying that it offered her escape from the oppressive walls.  
  
She was almost to the break when something caught her foot and sent her sprawling to the ground, her head bouncing off the floor hard enough to see stars. She sat up and looked back to see what she'd tripped over and screamed.  
  
Three corpses sat against the wall, resting shoulder to shoulder. They each wore glasses and a plain blue uniform and had been sitting there so long that their skin had dried and pulled tight across their skulls. Brown hair still clung in brittle clumps to their scalps and even in death they looked so much alike that they might have been brothers. They each also bore a near identical black stain of ancient blood down the front of their jackets.  
  
Eimi began to hyperventilate as she saw more nebulous forms against the walls, realizing that they all must be bodies. A whimper died in her throat as she scrambled towards the window, using her elbow to finish breaking out a pane big enough to crawl through. She didn't care that she cut her hand as she cleared the glass away and broke another pane, knowing that something was creeping up behind her. The hole was almost big enough to crawl through when Eimi heard a soft scuffling directly behind her. She froze, not even daring to breathe, praying that the noise had only been in her mind.  
  
The scuffling sound came from behind her again, and Eimi closed her hand around a shard of glass as she slowly turned around. A shape moved hesitantly through the shadows towards her, pausing at the edge of the light. Eimi held the shard threateningly in front of her, but her hand shook so hard that it slipped through her bloody fingers and smashed against the floor.  
  
The shape flinched back at the sound of shattering glass, but when Eimi didn't move it crept into the light. It was a girl of almost doll-like beauty. She had dirty, blond hair that had been halfheartedly pinned up on her head, and she wore a badly stained and torn yellow uniform. Eimi felt a small bit of relief when she saw that the girl seemed even more terrified than she was.  
  
The girl opened her mouth and made a soft mewling noise. When Eimi didn't react the girl moved closer and repeated the sound and Emi realized that the girl didn't have a tongue.  
  
Eimi tried to sidle away but the girl moved to block her. Eimi glanced in the other direction, but the three corpses barred that path. The girl moved even closer, staring intently up at her face.  
  
"W-what do you want?" Eimi asked tremulously, pressing her back to the wall. At the sound of her voice, the girl's eyes went wide and she threw herself at Eimi, wrapping her arms around Eimi's back and hugging her tightly. The girl pressed her face against Eimi's chest and she could feel hot tears soaking into her shirt.  
  
Finally the tears stopped and the girl stepped back. Her face was illuminated with a kind of tragic radiance, and her eyes contained a mix of emotion that Eimi couldn't decipher. She reached for Eimi's hand and gestured back into the shadow of the hall. Eimi tried to resist but the girl pulled with surprising strength, dragging her on.  
  
"Who are you, what do you want?" Eimi asked, trying to dig her heels in. The girl glanced back at her with an expression tinged by arrogance, then made of series of soft but unintelligible sounds. She stopped suddenly, holding up a finger and tracing symbols in the air. It took Eimi several tries to follow but she finally saw what the girl was trying to write. "Nanami?" she repeated. That had been one of the names she'd hear her mother say in her sleep.  
  
The girl again began tugging at her hand and Eimi had no choice but to follow. Several times the girl stopped, gesturing for silence, and she seemed to listen for something before moving on. Eimi tried to keep her fear under control, but many corridors had vaguely human shapes laid against their walls and several times the death fetor suddenly grew stronger.  
  
Finally they stopped, and Eimi was horrified to see the girl stop and bow to three bodies seated primly against the wall. It was only when dragged closer that Eimi realized they were merely dummies, dressed in uniforms.  
  
Nanami noticed her glance and pointed at each dummy, signing in the air. 'Keiko, ' 'Eiko,' 'Yuuko,' she gestured, the concluded with 'friends.'  
  
Eimi wondered if the girl was completely mad. "They're not real," she said, trying to edge back. The look that Nanami gave her was filled with childish irritation, but then it abruptly hardened. She mimed drawing a sword, then drove it into each of the dummies' chests in turn, then slamming the imaginary sword back into it's sheath. She stared Eimi in the eye, tears sparkling in her own, daring her to say anything more.  
  
Eimi dropped her eyes and Nanami's face took something of a triumphant tilt as she pulled Eimi past the dummies and into the room beyond. A grand piano occupied the room's center, a tangle of wire and splintered wood spilling from it's interior. Nanami glanced around uncertainly and then made a soft mewling noise. A shape dislodged itself from the wall and rose, resolving itself into the form of a boy, a stopwatch clutched tightly in one hand, a crumbling nest holding the dried body of a baby bird cradled in the crook of his arm.  
  
He stared blankly at Eimi. "Who are you?" he asked tonelessly.  
  
Eimi stared at him and Nanami, pulling back now that the girl had let go of her hand. "Where are we?"  
  
Nanami burst into a series of garbled noises, accompanied by an occasional hand gesture. The boy frowned, a spark of life finally appearing in his eyes, and he stepped closer, grabbing Eimi's chin and staring up at her face. "Don't be foolish," he said, letting go of her face, "she's not Utena."  
  
Nanami stamped her foot and launched into another set of sounds and gestures. This time the boy nodded slowly, giving Eimi a thoughtful glance. "Perhaps you're right."  
  
Regaining a measure of her composure, Eimi pounced on the boy's mention of her mother. "Utena? Utena Tenjou? Do you know my mother?"  
  
"So Nanami was right-." The boy began, and Nanami snorted derisively.  
  
"Please, " Eimi said carefully, "tell me, how do you know my mother? Where is this place? Why am I here?"  
  
The boy's eyes drifted away from her face, falling onto the piano and his expression grew vacant again. Nanami stamped her foot again and gave a short, sharp cry. The boy's eyes snapped back into focus, his fingers clenching convulsively on the stopwatch's button, although nothing happened. "We went to school together," he blurted out.  
  
Eimi was no longer sure of what it was safe to believe anymore, but she still found it difficult to take the boy seriously. "You couldn't have. You wouldn't even have been born when my mother was in school."  
  
The boy's eyes clouded again. "I was twelve when I knew Utena Tenjou. I am twelve, I will be twelve, I have been twelve for more times than I know how to remember."  
  
There was a tone to his voice that made a shiver run up Eimi's spine. "This place, was this terrible place where my mother went to school?"  
  
Miki began to sway softly to some unheard melody. "It wasn't always like this. Once it was a sunlit place, a beautiful prison garden with walls so high that we couldn't imagine that our garden was not the whole world. Then Tenjou-senpai was sent beyond its walls and our gardener abandoned us."  
  
He was about to say more when the air seemed to shake, great bells tolling nearby. Eimi covered her ears but the sound was so loud, so terrible, like a hammer pounding against a brass sepulchre, that her hands did nothing to dampen the clamor.  
  
Both Nanami's and the boy's face went dead white at the sound and their heads both turned to look towards, and Eimi somehow instinctively knew, the dead forest.  
  
"What was that?" Eimi asked, slowly taking her hands away from her ears as the tolling faded.  
  
"A duel has been called," the boy said and simultaneously both he and Nanami turned and began to walk stiffly towards the door. Nanami threw herself at the piano, grabbing its side with a white-knuckled grip, but her feet pulled her inexorably and her fingers began to slip. With a sudden burst of strength she thrust an arm into the piano's interior. It came out bloody, but clutching several lengths of wire. As her feet carried her away, she tried to turn and stared imploringly at Eimi. "Kuuh muh," she forced the sounds out, thrusting the piano wire at Eimi. "Huhees, kuh muh."  
  
"She wants you to kill her,' the boy explained. He was stopped in the doorway, his face pale from the strain of standing still, his gaze nearly sharp enough to cut..  
  
Eimi shrank back, trying to hide herself from the despair in Nanami's eyes. "Why?"  
  
"Because after the first few escaped, He decreed that that only a Duel can end our lives. This is His coffin, where His will Is. If you are Utena's child... The rules of this place seemed to bind her less tightly than it did the rest. Nanami's hope, however futile, is that you have the power to take her from our garden." Anything else he meant to say was cut off as his legs lurched suddenly forward and his head struck the doorframe with enough force to splinter the wood.  
  
Nanami continued to stare pleadingly at Eimi, thrusting the wires towards her. "I'm sorry," Eimi said, clenching her eyes tightly shut. "I-I can't." She heard Nanami whimper and then to her horror felt her own feet stumble into motion, propelling her after the other two. As she staggered into the hallway behind the other two Miki rolled his head back on his shoulders, giving her a vacant smile as he stared back through the tops of his eyes. "Welcome to Ohtori Academy."  
  
Eimi's feet carried her through the school, always inexorably up no matter how hard she tried to fight against them. Several times she thought she saw other people walking stiffly through the halls, but it was always out of the corner of her eye and they were always gone when she tried to look directly.  
  
When her feet finally stopped, she was standing on a balcony high above the rest of school, allowing her to see over the tops of the school buildings to the forest. Except now something rose through clutching treetops. Extending high above the skeletal branches was a spiraling staircase the color of bleached bone. It reached high above the rest of the school, ending in an impossibly balanced and delicate platform.  
  
A young boy, blonde and pale, stood on one side; opposite him was the boy that Eimi had seen in her vision in the school courtyard. Both clutched swords in their hands, although the young boy fingered the hilt of his nervously, while the older one stood perfectly still, his eyes closed, barely even seeming to breathe.  
  
There was a third figure on the platform as well, but Eimi's eyes refused to turn in his direction and her mind refused to recognize his presence. Even at the distance she was at she could feel the darkness emanating from him like a physical essence and the smell of death was thick in her nose. Worst of all, like the driver from before, he exuded a terrifying sense of familiarity, as if he were someone she should have known intimately, even if she could not remember why. She could only make herself glance in his direction out of the corner of her eye, and all that she could make out was the dried, dead rose he held in one hand.  
  
Besides Nanami and the boy, there was one other on the balcony with her, although he didn't react to their presence. _A beautiful man with scarlet hair_. Her mother's words came unbidden as Eimi stared at the man's back.  
  
He didn't turn around until Nanami finally lifted her eyes and looked out at the arena, crying out as she saw who stood within. As he turned, the first thought that came to Eimi's mind was how thin he was. Barely any flesh lay beneath his tightly drawn skin and even standing still his limbs trembled violently. His expression was that of a man who had been completely broken again and again and again.  
  
Scars covered almost every inch of exposed skin, a particularly ugly set closing his left eye and running the length of his face. It took Eimi a moment to realize that the scars across his eye were actually a set of characters. _The prince of defiance_ she read.  
  
"Miki," he said, acknowledging the boy with a nod, in a voice that was only a hair away from tremulous.  
  
"Touga," the other replied, then turned back to look out at the arena.  
  
Touga spared Nanami no more than a diffident glance, but when his eyes fell on Eimi, for a moment she saw him how he must have been before, arrogant, brash, near indomitable in his own self-confidence, but then the hopelessness came crashing back even stronger than ever. "It's over then," he said simply. "If he has you then there is no hope left. We are lost."  
  
Eimi felt the thing on the platform turn its attention towards her. "At last," it whispered sibilantly, although Eimi heard it as if it were right next to her ear, "you have arrived. At last you've come to me. I knew you wouldn't be able to deny me forever. With you, the way before me is open. With you, I no longer need the duels to obtain my key, child of mine."  
  
The older boy's eyes snapped open at the words, and the younger one began to sob with relief, his sword falling from his hand. The dark thing's voice grew as cold as the void as he raised his hand in front of him. "That does not mean I want my games to cease," he said, then crushed the rose.  
  
The older boy moved almost faster than the eye could follow. The younger didn't even have a chance to look up as the other's boy's sword flashed out. The blond child remained upright for a moment longer then slumped forward, his head rolling free of his body.  
  
Nanami gave a soul-wrenching scream and ran towards the edge of the balcony. She got within five steps of the low rail before she began to slow, and by the time her leading foot was almost to the edge she wasn't moving at all, frozen in mid leap, tears rolling down her face as she screamed hysterically.  
  
"Not until I say you can, silly girl," the thing in the arena laughed disjointedly then turned his attention back to Eimi. "Now, Daughter," it spoke the word with obscene relish, "we have much to do." He faded back from the arena and Eimi could feel him the stain of his presence moving down the stairway, through the forest, towards her.  
  
Touga's knuckles where white around the hilt of the sword he wore at his side. "If he gets you," he began slowly, "then it is truly over."  
  
Miki turned to look at her, his finger clamping the stopwatch timer so rapidly that the clicking blurred into one long sound. "Despite the pain, the despair, the misery we have here, he is bound even more tightly to this garden than we are. His cruelty is that of a man locked far, far away from the sun. But now you're here and he can bring the walls tumbling down and tear his shackles asunder."  
  
"It cannot be allowed," Touga said and wrenched his sword from its sheath as he strode towards Eimi. Almost immediately his steps began to slow as if he were wading through molasses. His face was white with exertion and sweat poured from his brow as he sluggishly lifted the sword above his head. "Tenjou," he gasped and Eimi couldn't tell if he was trying to speak to her or her mother, "forgive me. There is no other way!"  
  
The scar was livid against Touga's face as mustered the strength to bring the sword down and Eimi felt the darkness surge with fury, and fear. Touga must have felt it too because he suddenly faltered, staggering back half a step. Then he dipped down into some unseen reserve and again Eimi saw him as he once had been, and with a desperate cry he wrenched his blade downwards.  
  
Eimi saw her reflection in Touga's blade as it fell. Her hair was a rich shade of royal purple and a brilliant streak of silver ran through her bangs.  
  
Eimi cried out as fire ran up the length of her arm and even as she watched her reflection grow in Touga's blade the world began to fly apart around her and she plunged headlong into the void.  
  
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------- 


	3. Void Dance

Chapter Three:  
  
Kuukuu Bugaku  
  
-------------------------------------------------------  
  
The first thing that Eimi realized was that she couldn't move. Something held her firmly in place, and even she hadn't been restrained her body felt distant and numb like it wasn't hers at all. Her second realization, as she tried to peer through foggy eyes was that there was someone leaning over her. "Souji-sensei?" she asked and tried to move again, then cried out as the jolt sent agony running the length of her arm.  
  
"Lie still," he said firmly. "You're in an ambulance. You had an accident."  
  
"What happened?"  
  
"You caught your finger in the paper cutter. They think that the doctors can reattach it."  
  
Eimi's eyes cleared as she stared directly into Mikage's face, seeing in his eyes that he was lying.  
  
"Although how she managed to cut off just her ring finger," one of the paramedics snorted, thinking that she was speaking to low for Eimi to hear, "is beyond me."  
  
Mikage gave the woman a sharp glance, which she missed, and then leaned forward. "The girl is a bit taken with me and had her attention turned towards flirtations instead of where her fingers were going."  
  
The paramedic openly eyed Mikage. "God, kids are stupid these days."  
  
Mikage gave her a cold smile and then a reassuring nod to Eimi as the ambulance stopped and the doors flew open. As Eimi's stretcher was pulled out, she saw him stare at the palm of his hand, then slip something into his pocket.  
  
-------------------------------------------------------  
  
Eimi dozed fitfully, still groggy from the surgical anesthesia. Someone came into her room as her head finally began to clear, and she cracked her eye enough too see Mikage peering down at her. There wasn't enough light to see his expression, but his breath brushed rapidly against her forehead. He quickly stood upright as the door opened again and someone else entered the room. Mikage joined him at the door and they apparently thought that she was still asleep because they made little effort to keep their voices down. "How did the surgery go?" Mikage asked.  
  
"As well as can be expected. Her finger is going to be stiff and sore for several months and I doubt that she'll ever have full use of it again. You cut it fairly close to the knuckle." There was a note of admonishment in the man's voice.  
  
Mikage's voice held no remorse. "I did what I had to. There was no other way to get the ring off."  
  
"Did you try butter?"  
  
Mikage's head snapped up. "How can you joke-.  
  
The doctor held up a hand. "A small bit of levity would do you well... But then again, you never do anything by halves, do you, Souji?"  
  
"I hardly think that you're in any position to reproach me, Tsuchiya."  
  
There was a moment of silence, and when the other man spoke, he had obviously conceded the point to Mikage. "We haven't been able to contact her mother yet. I certainly don't relish having to break the news that you cut her daughter's finger off with a papercutter. She really will kill you this time."  
  
"Tenjou is the least of our worries," Mikage said as he reached into his pocket and handed something over to the doctor. "Take a look at this."  
  
Ruka inhaled sharply. "A black rose signet? Where did you get this?"  
  
"It's mine."  
  
"Yours? But it's-."  
  
"Was broken. After Eiminoujo put her mother's ring on, the halves of mine rejoined. I could not break it again."  
  
Ruka leaned back against the door, his breathing heavy. "I was hoping that it was merely coincidence, but... the suicides have started again. Three within the past two weeks, all by fire. How many of your hundred are left now? Sixty-one, sixty-two?" His voice seemed on the edge of breaking. "Tell me Souji, how have your dreams been lately?"  
  
"I relive the death of the hundred nearly every night. Sometimes I walk along phantom streets to a graveyard where I know the names on the stones. It's all a reflection of the real. I found it, in Fukuoka."  
  
"The graveyard?"  
  
"Tokiko's there. She died fifty years ago the day I found it, a very old woman. What about yours?"  
  
"I try to dream of Juri, but Shiori always prevents it. Sometimes though, when Shiori isn't paying attention, I am able to follow Juri to Ohtori, although she always remains a step beyond my sight. I see what it has become."  
  
Mikage shifted slowly. "Sometimes, I see it too. It has not aged well."  
  
"And why do you think is that?"  
  
"I try to not think of Ohtori if I can help it."  
  
Ruka turned to look out the window. "In hindsight, consider just how much of Ohtori's form was a sop to Anthy Himemiya. Think for a moment of the sepulchre that it's become. It's not that Utena left it, at least not entirely. You graduated, I died, and Ohtori continued unchanged. The only constants of the place were its lord and lady. The two of them made a balance of sorts, and from how Ohtori has deteriorated, I'd say that one of its pillars has left it. I think that the Rose Bride has departed"  
  
Mikage clutched his ring, turning it fitfully in his palm. "But how? He bound her. No one can leave Ohtori without Akio allowing it, and Utena herself admitted to failing to have saved her."  
  
"You're too credulous sometimes Mikage. Utena might not have saved Anthy Himemiya, but maybe she loosened the Rose Bride's shackles enough for her to slip free."  
  
Ruka's voice gained a self-satisfied edge and Mikage ground his teeth audibly. "If the Rose Bride escaped, then where is she now? There's no way that she could escape our notice. We all shine to each other, those who have come from Ohtori. The moment that Eimi was born, we all _felt_ it. If the Rose Bride were here we'd see her like the sun shining at midnight."  
  
Ruka shrugged. "All I know is that Ohtori persisted long before either of us, and continued unchanged through countless revolutions of duels, until Tenjou. She somehow changed that."  
  
Before Mikage could reply, the door to the room crashed open, and Utena stormed into the room. "You!" Utena shouted accusingly at Mikage. "When they told me Eimi had had an accident, I knew that you were involved somehow! What did you do to her?"  
  
Mikage was momentarily taken aback, then his features fell dangerously still. "I cut her finger off," he said, with no hint of emotion in his voice.  
  
It was Utena's turn to be taken aback. "Y-you monster. I'll kill you!"  
  
Ruka put a restraining hand on Utena's shoulder, but she shook it off, grabbing Mikage by the collar and throwing him against the wall. Her hand clenched as if closing around the hilt of a sword. "You bastard, how, why did you do it?"  
  
Mikage's face had remained tightly blank, until that moment when his control snapped and he cut loose with fury to match Utena's. "Because you let her have this!" he shouted, pulling her rose signet from his pocket and thrusting it at her face. "I did it to save her soul!"  
  
Utena's eyes widened when she saw the ring. "That's mine! Give it back!"  
  
Mikage put his hand above his head. "I told you how dangerous this was, to you and your damn precious daughter! Why didn't you destroy it?"  
  
Utena grabbed his arm, pulling it down and trying to pry the ring from his fingers. Mikage pushed her back, but Utena lunged forward, her teeth sinking into his palm. Mikage shouted in pain, his fingers opening and the ring falling to the floor. It bounced once then rolled straight towards Eimi. It bounced again as it reached the bed and would have landed on the back of her hand if she hadn't scrambled to the other side of the bed.  
  
"You're awake," Ruka noted as Utena drew back from Mikage. "For how long?"  
  
Eimi stared at the ring as if it were a coiled viper. "How did it do that?" she whispered.  
  
Utena too was staring at the ring, then at Eimi. "How did you get that?"  
  
"From you, according to her," Mikage said, again in complete control as he wrapped a handkerchief around his bleeding hand. "You were sleeping with it last night."  
  
"No," Utena said tremulously, shaking her head, "It's kept in a safe place. I couldn't have-"  
  
"You did," Ruka interrupted. "Because your daughter had it this morning, and put it on.  
  
Mikage started for the ring. "If you're not strong enough, I'll destroy the it myself."  
  
"You can't!" Utena shouted, diving for the bed.  
  
Mikage beat her to it but as his hand closed around the ring he cried out and let it drop. The multitude of thorns melted back into the band as Mikage backed away. Utena picked it up without trouble and sobbed as she clutched it to her chest. "This is the only link I have to him, to her. If I destroyed it, I could no longer remember Anthy, dream of Touga... Oh Touga, what happened to you?" She sank to the floor, curling around the ring.  
  
"The prince of defiance," Eimi said, then noticed the glance that the two men gave her. "It was cut into his face, that message was carved over his eye."  
  
"You saw him?" Mikage asked sharply.  
  
Eimi nodded. "When I put the ring on, I went to that place, Ohtori. What was it?" She began to break down. "Why was it full of dead people?"  
  
A sudden chill gripped the room and both Ruka and Mikage seemed to slip out of focus. "It's where the dead may be alive again," Mikage said. "Where the road to eternity has been opened." Eimi reached for her throat, her mouth gaping as the air became too thick and too cold to breathe.  
  
Ruka's face was upturned, his eyes closed. "It's where you can prove there are miracles, where something eternal can be found."  
  
Utena rose, reaching for something that wasn't there. "It's where you can be a prince and-" her eyes suddenly regained their clarity and she staggered towards Mikage, her hand diving into his shirt, there was the smell of burning flesh as she hurled something towards the window. The small piece of black metal burned through the screen and disappeared over the sill. Both men snapped back into focus, and Eimi's chest heaved as the air again slid smoothly down her throat.  
  
"That is why the rings are dangerous," Mikage said. "Why you have to break them."  
  
Utena stared at the angry red circle burned into her hand. "Yours wasn't," she said accusingly.  
  
"It was. I broke it in two and hurled the halves into the ocean. Then I dropped it into the foundation of a construction site, but it came back to me, it always came back. When your daughter put your signet on, mine healed itself and I haven't been able to break it again."  
  
Utena held up her ring, her fingers trembling. "I buried this beside my parents, fourteen years ago. It, not them, is why I returned to that cemetery year after year."  
  
Ruka again seemed to fade slightly and put his hand over his heart, his breath rasping in his throat. "Something must... this can't..." he swayed, then forced himself to stand upright. "An end must be brought to all of this. If he manages to break his shackles, then it is the end to all of us."  
  
"Not only us," Mikage said and stared at Utena, who looked away.  
  
"Get out," she said. "Leave me and my daughter alone. I know you both. Get out."  
  
Mikage against seemed on the verge of losing control, but Ruka grabbed his shoulder and pulled him out of the room, giving Utena a look that was both sad and wary.  
  
Utena didn't move for a long time and Eimi curled up on the corner of the bed, realizing that she know longer knew who, or even what she was anymore. "What's going on?" she asked, almost pleading.  
  
Utena got up and slowly walked towards the window. Looking down she saw a small break in the flow of people on the sidewalk as they unconsciously stepped around a small object on the ground. She saw Mikage standing on the other side of the street, staring at where his ring lay. He looked up suddenly, his eyes meeting hers, then turned and walked off. Although her eyes had only been off of it for a few seconds, the ring was gone when she looked back, although she was sure that no one had picked it up.  
  
"M-mother," Eimi began, "when I was in... that place, I saw someone, something. It called me 'daughter.' Was it... who is my father?"  
  
Utena frowned as she turned, as if concentrating intently. "He was- I- you were..." She seemed to be fighting against something. Eimi reached out for her mother's hand but lethargy slammed down on her like a physical force and keeping her eyes open to almost all the strength she had. Utena's face went suddenly blank. "I left the tea steeping, I need to-. I..." Before Eimi could react her mother was out the door.  
  
A nurse came in shortly thereafter to check up on her. "Could I talk to Dr." although the lethargy had faded after her mother left, thinking was still a struggle, " Tsuchiya?"  
  
"He's gone home," the nurse replied. "If you're worried about your finger, don't be. Just rest it, and if it seems to be healing fine by the end of the week you can go home."  
  
Eimi didn't know how to tell the nurse that that was not her reason for wanting to see the doctor, but she smiled vapidly at the nurse's suggestion that that she get some more sleep so that she'd heal up nice and quick.  
  
Eimi sighed in frustration as the nurse left, then watched the shadows in the room disappear as night quickly fell. Her finger began to ache as the light faded, and she turned her head to the window. The sky was exceptionally clear and the stars shown brightly down at her. Eimi pulled the covers over her head and curled into a ball. There were so many stars and they were so close that they seemed to reaching out for her. Eimi turned her back to the window but that only made the sensation worse. She tried to focus on the sounds of life in the hall outside her room, and longed for Chuchu.  
  
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Eimi's eyes snapped open. There was someone in the room with her. "Who's there?" she asked. It took her a moment to even be sure that her eyes were open; all the light seemed to have been stripped from the room. A soft scuffle of movement came from the door and then a voice, distant and disconnected. "The way must be prepared."  
  
"Souji-sensei?"  
  
"This is the first step of the job you're advancing," he replied strangely. "Her eyes told me that she was one of those who wanted to make memories last forever. Your eyes tell me that you have the power to actually do so."  
  
Eimi could see the speaker, although the room was still completely dark. A young man stood in front of the door. He was dressed in a school uniform done all in black, an aura of even deeper black clinging to the flower pinned to his breast and emanating from the object clutched in one hand. When he spoke, it was with Mikage's voice. "To realize your power, you must realize your legacy."  
  
The boy took a step forward and for a moment Eimi saw the real Mikage underneath, as if the boy was an image laid on top him. The boy continued to walk towards her, not quite in synch with Mikage so that parts of him continually showed through. Eimi saw his face: his eyes were wide, blank. Dead.  
  
The boy reached for her and the darkness gathered around his palm shot forward. A black rose filled Eimi's eyes and a ring of fire burned into her forehead.  
  
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Eimi flailed blindly through the darkness. There was no ground, no down, no up, just black and endless cold. A hand suddenly reached over her shoulder and pressed itself against her breast, and Eimi screamed as daggers of ice pierced her heart.  
  
A face pressed against the side of her head. "Hush child," Mikage ordered her.  
  
A small whimper escaped Eimi's lips as the fingers of ice pushed deeper into her chest. "Mikage, why?"  
  
She could feel his lips against her ear. "With my signet whole, I felt him reaching for me, through the ring. I suppose even his patience is finite and having come so close to you once, he was not willing to wait for you to come to Ohtori on your own again. He knew what would tempt me, what price I would require to bring you to him."  
  
"No, Souji-sensei, you can't!"  
  
"He seemed to have thought that my graduation and exile would have left me broken and susceptible to temptation." Mikage gave a cold, dead chuckle. "It is a rare event indeed to pull a coup on the lord of Ohtori."  
  
Eimi looked down at where his fingers sank into her flesh. "Then why are you doing this?"  
  
Mikage's fingers flexed around her heart. "I cannot do this alone. Before, I had Mamiya to lend me strength, but he... Killing you would only grant us a temporary reprieve. Ohtori has persisted timelessly, but your mother changed that and that change might bring its end. You are Revolution's daughter, you can bring its apocalypse."  
  
Eimi's convulsed as Mikage's fingers clenched again. "What are you trying to do?"  
  
"The midgard serpent is so vast that if a few coils of its length are stolen, it will never notice. That is what I am doing, making light with the belly of the beast. I need your strength to conduct this interview," Mikage whispered and laid his other hand across Eimi's eyes. "I am going to show you your legacy."  
  
She could still feel Mikage's hand clasped across her eyes, his fingers around her heart, but she was staring into a tiny room through a square of glass. There was a chair, and a low shelf set into the wall in front of her, and something sat in the chair, the barest of nebulous outlines, but Eimi was sure that it was looking at her.  
  
"Begin," Mikage commanded.  
  
The silence was pregnant and then the form spoke in the most beautiful voice that Eimi had ever heard. Beautiful and familiar and for a moment she felt a primal memory of warmth, and weightlessness, and that voice whispering in her ear.  
  
"A garden," it started, "it all began in a garden. There were two, and the garden, and they were content for idle lifetimes, because their garden was as they wished it. But after time even perfection bred ennui, and the two sought something more."  
  
The shape was becoming more distinct, and Eimi thought she could make out a face, and two bottomless eyes.  
  
"Deeper," Mikage said when the figure fell silent. "Go deeper."  
  
"They left the garden and found a world that was harsh, and imperfect, everything that they wanted, and they created more like them to fill the world and make it bloom. Though they tried to keep themselves hidden from their creations, He could not bear to see His daughters suffer, for to Him each was a princess. So the people of the world came to know their father as the constant prince, but their mother was shy and reclusive, and her seclusion planted seeds of fear and mistrust within the hearts of her children."  
  
Something changed in the figure in the chair, something subtle, yet it still ran through Eimi like an electric shock. Mikage didn't seem to feel it and when Eimi tried to warn him, she found that she was unable to do anything more than watch.  
  
"Because of his love, all the girls of the world were princesses, every girl, save his sister. She alone could not be a princess, and thus became a witch." The figure's eyes became dark, turbulent, verdant pools, drawing her in. "And the witch became jealous as she watched her brother forever quest to save the princesses, jealous that she who was once the only other was now so neglected. Her jealously consumed her and she became a thing of darkness and one day she lured her brother into a trap and locked him away from the world, so that once again she would be the only other.  
  
"But the princesses of the world would not forget their prince, and this time it was they who quested for him, but always they were defeated by the evil witch."  
  
Mikage finally seemed to become aware that something wasn't right. "No," he said, tightening his arms around Eimi. "That's not right, that's not how it happened."  
  
The figure stared directly into Eimi's eyes and she felt terror curdle in her stomach as she recognized him. "And one day there was a girl who thought she was strong enough to best the witch, and for a time it seemed that she would be the one to free the prince, but ultimately the witch struck her down. However, before that, the princess got close enough to the prince to bear his daughter, a true princess, one who could finally defeat the witch."  
  
Eimi felt Mikage's body tense with terror. "No, that's wrong."  
  
The figure stood with enough force to smash the chair against the back wall. "I am not the midgard serpent. I know when someone tries to steal my belly button. I'm not the fool you take me for, Nemuro. I compelled you to bring my daughter to me, and thus you did." It spread its arms and the tiny room blew apart, disappearing into the void as greater darkness spewed forth. It grabbed Mikage's wrists, and pulled his fingers away from Eimi's heart and eyes then reached for her heart with its own hand.  
  
"No, damn it, no!" Mikage shouted, throwing himself at the center of the dark. His feet kicked out, catching Eimi in the stomach and spinning her off into the void.  
  
"No!" the darkness shouted, reaching out for Eimi, but Mikage tangled himself with it and Eimi felt currents in the void envelop and draw her down. The darkness cast Mikage aside, reaching out for her, but the currents had pulled them too far apart. The pressure of the dark increased and the last thing that Eimi saw was Mikage drifting through the void, a rime of ice already beginning to form across his face.  
  
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The first sense that Eimi regained was smell, the odor of death and age filling her nose. Touch came next, and she felt a crumbling marble railing beneath her hands. Her sight returned last, and when it did she found herself leaning over a balustrade several stories above the ground. She saw hundreds of doors lining the floors below her, and when her eyes reached the first floor, bodies.  
  
"No, please, no, I don't want to be here again," Eimi said, sliding down against the rail.  
  
"Who's there?" a harsh voice demanded, and Eimi heard the rasp of a sword sliding from its sheath.  
  
She looked up and saw a figure step out of a room several doors down. He wore a ragged kendo uniform, and with a mix of revulsion and terror Eimi recognized him as the young man from the arena, the one who had murdered the little boy. His eyes were empty and soulless and as he advanced on her she saw that blood still clung to the blade of his sword.  
  
***Author's Notes***  
  
Coming up next chapter, exposition and angst. 


End file.
